These Violent Delights Have Violent Ends

Setting the table is such an afterthought, I'm nearly finished before I even realize where I am. The finely gold-trimmed china is spread across four place settings, though one goes forever unused. It's just like any other night, the sounds of the kitchen filtering in from down the hall as feet pad in excitedly.

"Mum, mum!" Bea chirps, though her body doesn't match her voice. She's long and lanky, like a growing six year old, but her mannerisms and voice are those of a toddler. Like the toddler she'd been when I'd last seen her. It's a peculiar sight.

She rambles excitedly in our native tongue, hugging an expensive doll to her front as she crawls into the seat opposite me. I'm so enthralled with watching her, her eyes lighting up as she gives me a toothy grin. She looks just like she did in the photos I'd been given, her dark hair hanging long and straight around the shoulders of her finely sewn plum dress. Freckles dot across her cheeks. Dimpled cheeks like her father's, his same crooked grin stretching across her face as she settles into her chair.

There's a skip in my heartbeat as Nikolai makes his way in from the kitchen, a tray of food balanced on one arm as he laughs to be, carrying on a silly story from before. It's not even a story I can make out, my mind so wholly focused on watching them that their words hardly even register.

"Eh, Ljuba?" Nikolai's address seems to snap me out of it, and I look down at him at the head of the table, but the plates of food are gone. There's a somber tone that settles over us as he looks at me angrily, his arms crossed tightly on the table as he glares at me. "Will you just sign them, Ljuba?" He asks coolly, looking down at the stack of divorce papers and the pen that have replaced my plates and silverware.

"But what about dinner..?" I know I sound confused, both by the peculiar turn of my dream and the unaltered state of my own voice. "You cooked-" I frown, looking back down the table. There's something uneasy in it's bareness, the surface looking like water with subtle ripples emitting from where we've touched it.

The ripples grow more foreboding as my heart rate picks up, a familiar sense of panic settling in as I stare helplessly at Nikolai. I can't move, I can't speak, I'm frozen as I watch him sit there as faceless figures descend on us. I want to scream, but nothing comes out as my chest wracks with fear, their arms wrapping around him as they drag him from the table, his face twisted into one of anger and betrayal as he disappears from sight.

Then there is no table. Just darkness, and the sound of foot steps on wet cement. Searing pain in my head and the sensation of fear trickling down my spine as I turn back to Bea. Bea, looking terrified yet frozen as she stands before me with her doll tucked in her arms. Bea, whose eyes lock with mine right as the bat connects with her head.

"These violent delights have violent ends," My daughter's lips move with the words, but the voice that comes out is wholly different. Adult, and smooth. No sooner than the words have left her lips, blood follows suit.

There's no silent scream this time, no arms holding me, nothing but my own frozen limbs as I stand and watch as she collapses. The blood trickling from her nose and lips as she curls desperately in the fetal position as they hover over her. The sounds of her own juvenile screams as the bat lands on her arm and the bone snapping under its force. And the sound of my own heart hammering loudly against my ribs, my ears, my throat. Every muscle in my body burning with pain and fear and panic and helplessness.

Then nothing but the familiar jolt of a headache as light seeps in and the dream fades.

Last edited by Ljuba on Fri Dec 09, 2016 12:13 am; edited 2 times in total

I don't even remember falling asleep until the strange images begin to fill my head. Just watching as the small girl runs in to sit at the table, chattering away happily in gibberish, has me reeling. I don't know what to make of the bizarre imagery - shades and colors and variations in the shapes within the room leave me perplexed and anxious.

By the time the room descends into violence, my heart is pounding and I'm shaking all over. When I jolt awake, my body drenched in sweat and gasping for air, I have no idea what's happened - no idea where I am. All I know is the frantic pounding of my heart and the sudden jarring panic as I feel someone against me move.

The jolt of my headache is nothing compared to the sense of panic pouring off of Marnin as he clutches and pushes at me anxiously, my own awareness punching up as I scramble back only to the hit the back of the sofa as I try to calm him.

"Marn, Marn!" I say frantically, the anxiety from my own dream mixing seamlessly with his own nightmare as I try to catch his hands, "Marnin, it's me!"

"I don't know," I frown. "It's weird. I don't even know how to describe it... It's like... I was seeing it. Actually seeing it! There was, I don't know... a table, I think? And a little girl... and a man. I couldn't understand them, but I felt like I knew them.

"And then there were these men, just out of no where!" I shake my head sharply, my heart starting to hammer with the remembered terror of seeing the little girl beaten. I swallow roughly as I squirm in my seat, too afraid to say what happened next lest the knot in my throat clench shut.

"The people-," I start, swallowing roughly as I shake my head. "The people grabbed the man. I don't know where he went. And then they started hitting the-," but I can't finish the sentence. Instead I shake my head sharply. "The girl said something, though. Something weird. But I can't remember what exactly."

The strange smile that comes over me is all but comforting as I lean back against the arm of the couch, my hands dragging down my face tiredly as I laugh to myself. "Rivals," I say the word flatly, licking my lips. "Like the police?" My tone becomes higher, not quite hopeful or innocent, more... anticipating. It isn't the police. I know that. The fear in her heart tells me before she can even part her lips.

"What did you do?" I cut her off, not wanting to hear any apologies. I just want information. Maybe it's not so bad. There are plenty of people who do things to get by that aren't so bad. Victims of circumstance. That's fine. I can deal with that. "What did you do, Lju? When you were a boogeyman? Who were the people that feared you? Why'd he wanna leave, really?"

"I never hurt anybody!" I say sharply, my tone turning defensive as I twist to face him, "I don't know why he filed, Marn. He never gave me the papers, I found them in his office. He never got the chance."

Swallowing roughly, I wipe at my cheek absently. "Somehow, the other group found out who I was, and we started getting threats to the house. Dead animals, or weird letters. It wasn't long after that I found the papers, and by the end of the month-" I gesture towards my face defeatedly.